Having the right people in the right roles is the key to building a great company. It’s more important to ask “who” should be in the team before asking “what” the team should do. To become great, companies first had to make sure they had the right people and remove the wrong ones, even before they had a clear plan.

The right people have a way of finding success. For example, when Dick Cooley became the CEO of Wells Fargo, he didn’t know how banking rules were going to change, but he knew that if he had the best and brightest people working with him, they would figure it out together. And they did! Warren Buffett even said they had the best team in the business, and the company did really well.

Good-to-great companies cared more about finding people with the right qualities rather than just professional skills. They believed that you could teach the right people the skills they needed. With the right people, companies didn’t have to figure out how to make them work hard. They focused on who they hired, not just how much they paid them, and made a work environment where hardworking people could do well while those who didn’t work hard left. In top management, people either performed well or left the company on their own.

Good-to-great companies never hired the wrong person, even if they really needed someone. Instead, they hired as many right people as they could, even if they didn’t have specific jobs for them. And when they did realize they had the wrong person, they took action right away. They either let them go or tried to find a better role for them. They didn’t wait, because waiting just made things frustrating for everyone else.